MELISSA HARRIS-PERRY, MSBNC ANCHOR: This morning, my question, what are the Koch Brothers hoping to buy for $25 million?

Plus, 50 years after freedom summer, the fight for the vote continues. And legendary organizer Bob Moses is coming to Nerdland. But first, all bets are off when it comes to what happens next in Iraq.

Good morning. I`m Melissa Harris-Perry, and this morning we have these dramatic new images out of Baghdad. A military parade of thousands of Shia militia marched through the streets of the city raising sectarian tensions as fighting between extremist Sunni militants and the Iraq government threatens to push the country into civil war. On Thursday we learned how the United States will be getting involved in the conflict in Iraq when President Obama made this announcement.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We have had advisers in Iraq through our embassy and we`re prepared to send a small number of additional American military advisers, up to 300, to assess how we can best train, advise, and support the Iraqi security forces going forward.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS-PERRY: So, this conflict which has cast Iraq into the deepest uncertainty since the end of the U.S. occupation in 2011 has pitted those Iraqi security forces against a group whose meaning in English roughly translates to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, otherwise known as ISIS, or you may have heard the president refer to them in a different translation as ISIL, ISIL. ISIS a militant jihadist group of Sunni Muslims whose stated goal is to redraw the boundaries of sovereign nations in the Middle East in order to establish an Islamic empire across the region. The group, which has its origins in al Qaeda, is so extreme in its tactics that even al Qaeda leadership has rejected them and severed ties. In fact, some have called ISIS a rival to al Qaeda as the most powerful of jihadist groups and it`s been flexing that muscle in a series of victories against the Iraqi army, which has failed to stop ISIS from seizing control of city after city in Iraq. By some estimates ISIS has already laid claim to up to a third of the country. And that includes Iraq`s second largest city of Mosul, which last Wednesday came under ISIS control after just 800 of their fighters were able to defeat nearly 30,000 Iraqi soldiers who reportedly backed down without putting up much of a fight.

For now helping those struggling security forces in Iraq is the only job President Obama is sending those 300 U.S. advisers to do. The scope of their role includes assisting with intelligence gathering and planning military operations against the ISIS militants and not, as the president made a point of saying, revisiting a 2014 version of the U.S. war in Iraq.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: American forces will not be returning to combat in Iraq. There`s no military solution inside of Iraq, certainly not one that is led by the United States.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS-PERRY: What the United States will be leading, however, is the diplomatic effort to promote stability in the country. President Obama is launching that effort by sending Secretary of State John Kerry overseas to meet with U.S. allies in the Middle East and Europe. He also stopped short of taking military action including the air strikes requested by the Iraqi government by taking them completely off the table.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: Because of our increased intelligence resources, we`re developing more information about potential targets associated with ISIL and going forward we will be prepared to take targeted and precise military action if and when we determine that the situation on the ground requires it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS-PERRY: So with those not completely off the table, we need to look no further than the decade long U.S. occupation that ended barely two and a half years ago for a reminder of why U.S. military might is no easy solution to conflict in Iraq. The invasion and occupation of Iraq cost nearly $1 trillion, the lives of more than 4,500 U.S. soldiers and an estimated 100,000 Iraqis. But to fully understand the complexity of the conflict requires we look a back a bit farther in time. The members of ISIS, like most of the world`s billion-plus followers of Islam are Sunni Muslims, except in Iraq which is among a handful of countries where Sunnis are outnumbered by Shia Muslims.

The division between these two largest sects of Islam can be traced all the way back to the death of the Prophet Mohammed in the year 632, when Sunnis and Shia split over the fundamental disagreement about the Prophet Mohammed`s successor. Sunnis controlled politics in Iraq from the end of World War I up until the last time they held power in the country when the United States ousted the Sunni-led government of Saddam Hussein in 2003. In the new Iraq envisioned by the U.S. after the invasion a democratic state that upheld civil liberties would allow for a sharing of power that would include both the Sunni minority and the Shia majority except things didn`t work out quite as well as the U.S. had planned. Instead, Saddam`s successor and Iraq`s current prime minister, a devout Shiite, Maliki, had reportedly ignored opportunities for political accord for the Sunni community, monopolized power and used aggressive military force to tamp down on political opposition. He`s left many moderate Sunnis in Iraq feeling politically and economically shut out and has made for an easy recruitment pitch for the Sunni radicals and ISIS looking for support for their insurgency. Now once again the United States is tiptoeing a fine line between the two groups as it wades yet again into the middle of a struggle for political power in Iraq.

For more now we go live to Ayman Mohyeldin in Irbil, Iraq. Ayman, this morning we are seeing images of a show of force in Baghdad. How stable does the official government of Iraq seem to be, and is ISIS being pushed back from the gains that it made last week?

AYMAN MOHYELDIN, NBC NEWS FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT: Well, right now the Iraqi government faces two challenges. One, the external political pressure on Prime Minister Maliki, and that`s coming from a whole host of countries, predominantly Sunni countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United States and others that are starting to see him as being an inefficient leader, one who has led the country astray and created sectarian division. So, there is mounting international pressure on him to perhaps step aside and give the chance to somebody else to come into power. However, there are internal pressures and those are more political, because about a month and a half ago, this country held elections and, in fact, although his party won a large share of the parliamentary seats, he has yet to actually form a coalition government. He has yet to actually form a new cabinet. And that is why he`s coming under internal pressure as well to perhaps step aside and to perhaps give the chance to somebody else.

But in terms of the ISIL or ISIS group and the pressure that is coming on them militarily from the Iraqi government, ISIS is definitely fighting. They are still taking over territories, including towns and cities. But they so far have not made that significant advance onto the capital Baghdad. Overnight, though, they did score a strategic victory. They managed to take the border crossing of the town called al-Qa`im, which is on the border between Syria and Iraq and in the process of doing so, they have now secured one more entry point, from which they can bring in weapons and fighters into the battlefield here, and have now obliterated that border between Syria and Iraq. It`s completely now under their control and a lot of people are afraid that means that this fight is going to get a lot uglier in the coming weeks and months. But in terms of their territorial expansion towards Baghdad, that has yet to happen. And I think the Iraqi army has started to regroup, they are starting to carry out air strikes. They`re getting some help from the Kurdish Peshmerga here in the north. But for the time being, though, they still have the momentum on their side unless the Iraqi government can launch a counteroffensive to retake that territory.

HARRIS-PERRY: Ayman Mohyeldin in Irbil, Iraq, thank you so much for that report.

At the table with me this morning are Earl Catagnus, who`s an Iraq war veteran and assistant professor of history and security studies at Valley Forge Military College, and also at this point Nerdland`s sort of voice on what we are doing in Iraq and Aneesh Raman, who is a journalist who has reported extensively in Iraq and is now a senior editor at the news site Ozy.com. Thank you both for being here. I want to start with some of what we heard there from Ayman. Let`s begin with this question about the leader. Is it part of it - taking your class, right, by going back and trying to read and thinking about how old these divisions are, is it unreasonable to expect that any given leader through sheer force of personality or will could bring together these groups? In other words, is partition inevitable at this point?

ANEESH RAMAN, SR. EDITOR, OZY.COM: It`s a great question. When I was there in `06-`07 the lead up to that had been the number of elections and I interviewed a number of prime ministers who preceded Maliki in a transition. And they all spoke of themselves as founding fathers. They equated their actions to that of George Washington, John Adams. None of them, though, really were speaking to Iraq with a unifying voice. There are a lot of Iraqis who see themselves as Iraqi first and then Shia, Sunni or Kurds. The political leaders all saw it as a game, where they couldn`t compromise too much. They couldn`t demand too little. And it was a struggle for power. And out of that emerged Maliki who was a compromise candidate. He really wasn`t someone that inspired the Iraqi people or even inspired any confidence among his party. He was just everyone`s second choice. And when they couldn`t decide on a top choice, he stepped in. He then took that role and grabbed it and became an authoritarian, almost, political leader. And as we left, he politicized the military. He promoted a lot of Shia generals who otherwise wouldn`t have had that authority. And that`s part of what disenfranchised the Sunnis. He left them out of a lot of decision making. That`s part of what disenfranchised the Sunnis. And so, he set the table for ISIS to be able to come in and do this sort of brazen assault that we`ve seen. And what is working for ISIS right now is what Ayman just mentioned, there`s no real government right now in Iraq. They`re in a transition. They have to certify the election results, they have to put in place a new prime minister or president and speaker. It`s a void right now and you have an ineffective leader trying to manage a void and now a growing civil war.

HARRIS-PERRY: So, in that moment, you took us back to 2006-`07. And I did - you know, again, if we were - we remember that the man who is now our vice president, Joe Biden, in 2006-`07 during that civil conflict, suggested that partition was, in fact, the likely outcome. Can we see now Vice President Biden? Right, so there he`s saying the idea as in Bosnia is to maintain a unified Iraq by decentralizing it, giving each ethno-religious group, Kurds, Sunni, Arab and Shia Arab room to run its own affairs while leaving the central government in charge of common interests. Does that, Earl, sound like a reasonable way -- there was a laughter about that at the time. But is that precisely where we`re going now?

EARL J. CATAGNUS JR., PROF., VALLEY FORGE MILITARY COLLEGE: No, absolutely not. And one is the arrogance of the West to actually suggest that we`re going to partition again this sovereign country. And I find it really offensive to even suggest it. That - that and people, and Iraqis do self-identify as Iraqi as opposed to Saudi or to Turkish or to Iranian that you can come in and tell them you can`t handle or manage your conflict so the U.N. is going to come in and partition you like we did after the Second World War and after we did after the First World War. I don`t think the U.N. has, one, the clout, not do they have the political backing and I don`t think they have the people`s will of the world or even in that region. So, and I don`t think that the tribal leadership will allow that to happen. Because if you have a smaller Sunni al-Anbar province, Sunni tribes there and the Shia and then the Kurds, well, now you have Iranian influence that is going to take over the Shia partition, Saudi influence over the Anbar partition and the Kurdish region, everybody hates the Kurds because they have a Turkish population in Turkey and Iran. So there`s going to be a fight there in between. So, I don`t think it`s in anybody`s interests. Now I think federalization or more autonomy, definitely more inclusive government as it`s definitely a situation that will happen. Sunni tribal leaders are going to -- they`re stepping up now because they`re seeing this, the way that ISIS has moved, and the way that their extremist view on religion on Islam and they`re going to step up and stop in their particular regions of power, so it won`t allow it to happen, but they`re going to use this scare to gain political influence.

HARRIS-PERRY: OK, so, I want you to stick with me, because when we come back I want to ask you specifically about how ISIS is using not only the military power but also the power of hearts and minds to try to win over and to try to think a little bit about these identities. I also want to talk a little bit about this arrogance of the West and the notion of our role and whether or not we have one there at this time when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: You said that the war was ended in Iraq. You said al Qaeda was decimated. You said it was stable.

OBAMA: It was. And - but just because something is stable two years ago or four years ago doesn`t mean that it`s stable right now. And what we have is a situation in which, in part, because of growing mistrust between Sunni and Shia, some of the forces that have always possibly pulled Iraq apart are stronger now. Those forces that could keep the country united are weaker. It is ultimately going to be up to the Iraqi leadership to try to pull the politics of the country back together again.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS-PERRY: That was President Obama speaking with "Morning Joe`s " Mika Brzezinski in an interview that air on Monday on MSNBC. So, Earl, I want to come back to that. Because obviously, there is politics here. But I want to listen to one more thing that the president said during his presser about this idea of American interest and then ask you a question about it. Let`s listen to that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: But what`s clear from the last decade is the need for the United States to ask hard questions before we take action abroad. Particularly military action. The most important question we should all be asking, the issue of it, we have to keep front and center, the issue that I keep front and center, is what is in the national security interests of the United States?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS-PERRY: Is sending 300 advisers in the national security interests of the United States?

CATAGNUS: I think absolutely. I just have to mention this about the 300 and what the significance of that number is, it`s symbolic. The movie now "300" with the 300 Spartans it`s an East versus West fight. I don`t know if this is where the sophistication -- why the president chose 300, and I don`t know, but it signals maybe to Iran because we see that because the movie was a big downer and Iran wasn`t allowed it to be played but because it showed the Persians in this negative Barbarous state. But - so, I don`t again, this is - it`s an example of that - if it is not intended, and it`s an unintended consequence you`re thumbing your nose in another part of the region, just because of your ignorance of what that means, that 300 military advisers, American Spartan warriors that are the Special Forces and, again, I don`t know if that was intended or unintended, but it will signal a message to Iran.

HARRIS-PERRY: And is it a euphemism? Are they really advisers or are they troops?

CATAGNUS: They`re advisers.

HARRIS-PERRY: ok.

CATAGNUS: They will be - they are advisers. They will have clear orders not to get - unless they not to engage. And their mission is not to engage. They may eventually turn into terminal air controllers where if they do initiate air strikes they will control the air at the point of when the impact, but that`s the only engagement that they will. Even in Afghanistan when the Special Forces went in, they were never really engaged during the invasion of Afghanistan. They were actually controlling air. So at the same time, these -- this shows support and it gives the Iraqi army the necessary backbone to really push forward with this. And it gives them, the Sunni people -- and I just heard this again from a Sunni retired admiral that said, America, please help the people of Iraq. Not our politicians. The people.

HARRIS-PERRY: But the people. All right. So, clearly, when you bring up the politicians there at the end, I`m thinking, OK, clearly there`s a politics to how - to sending advisers, to talking about air strikes, but not talking about boots on the ground. Here in the U.S. there is simply no appetite for a reinvasion. On the other hand, we are not the only political sort of feature in this. What I was listening to Ayman say about what is going on at the border of Syria and given ISIS sophistication about their interest in a broad, regional, potentially even governing relationship -- because they`re not just blowing things up, they are also doing a variety of things to win hearts and minds, how concerned should we be regionally? What should we be thinking about in a broader, regional sense?

RAMAN: We had on Ozy a great piece by John McLaughlin, the former deputy director of the CIA and he argues, one, that partition, even if it doesn`t happen in a formal way is the informal reality that`s going to take root in Iraq. But he also said the concern for the U.S. is really regional instability. The Mideast is on fire. And when you look at, a, I think Iran is a really interesting country to look at. I did a bunch of trips in there. The Iranian government loves crisis. What they love more than crisis is sectarian crisis, when they can rally the Shia cause. You have a hugely young population there that doesn`t connect with the Iran/Iraq war, which gave a lot of credibility to the Iranian government. And so, that divide has been deepening. This gives them a new in, a new way to rally the country. And so, you`re going to see them be very aggressive, I think, about trying not just to be players in Iraq, but use the Iraq volatility to play back at home in domestic politics. Syria, as you mentioned, an open border. This idea of ISIS even planning for governance which we`ve seen, not just taking territory, but thinking about how they`re going to run these areas because they`re not really fearful of people coming back.

HARRIS-PERRY: I really, really want to emphasize how important it is that we not just sort of write off ISIS as, you know, sort of frightening in a military sense but unsophisticated. They really are quite sophisticated.

RAMAN: Yeah, I mean just their timing of their assault came as we spoke about with Ayman at this void in governance, this transition, this moment where there`s parts of the Iraqi government crippled because they don`t have leaders that are in office. And so I think generally in the region there`s one country I would say that we should all look at in Nerdland that other people maybe aren`t. Emily Cadei, one of our writers, did a great piece a week or two ago about Jordan. Jordan is probably one of our last stable allies in the Arab world. Jordan has seen an influx of refugees from the Palestinian territories, influx from Syria, of Syrian refugees, influx from Iraq of Iraqi refugees. Those refugees are weighing down on the economy during the Arab spring, growing calls for democratic reform in Jordan. The king has put forward some reforms. Unclear if they`re enough. But the vast majority of fighters, foreign fighters that are in Syria, were coming from Jordan and they`re going to come back at some point. And so Jordan, I think, is a really key country for us to watch.

HARRIS-PERRY: I appreciate you setting the table for us, so all my producers, who are back in the control room start gearing up your Jordan research, apparently. That`s what we`re going to be on. Aneesh says so. Earl Catagnus Jr., Aneesh Raman, thank you both for being here today. And up next, here in Nerdland we also thought that Ta-Nehisi Coates made a compelling point in his article "The Case for Reparations." But we didn`t think they would take it quite so seriously in Texas.

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HARRIS-PERRY: In Texas, the Dallas County Commissioners Court did something pretty amazing this week and it may all have been an accident. Tuesday John Wiley Price, the only African-American member of the commission introduced a resolution simply known as the "Juneteenth resolution." Juneteenth refers to the day enslaved people in Texas learned that slavery was officially over two years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Price`s Juneteenth resolution was approved unanimously by the commission without comment. After all, the title seemed innocuous as much as the other proclamations endorsed by the commission that day including one supporting men`s health month and the American Kidney Fund, but the Juneteenth resolution was a bit different and went much further than just celebrating Juneteenth. Price says he was inspired after reading Ta-Nehisi Coates` article "The Case for Reparations" in "The Atlantic" which we featured here on "MHP" show. Instead of posting the resolution online, Price read it to his fellow commissioners ending it with these words. "Be it further resolved that the dereliction that has caused 400 years of significant suffering, the descendants of those who had been enslaved Africans, who built this country should be satisfied with monetary and substantial reparations to the same. His fellow commissioners quickly approved the resolution, even though some didn`t seem to realize exactly what they approved.

The court`s lone Republican later changed his vote to abstention after admitting he hadn`t read the proclamation. None of the other commissioners changed their minds, but some complain that they didn`t have a chance to read it beforehand. Now the resolution is nonbinding, so it`s unlikely that any money is going to be doled out. But it does mean that support for reparations is now the county`s official position. Good job, Dallas county commissioners whether you meant it or not. Up next, huddled masses here at home.

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HARRIS-PERRY: For the past two weeks we`ve been bringing you the story of the surge in accompanied migrant children who`d been making their way across the border into the United States from Mexico and Central America. Since October of last year more than 47,000 children have arrived alone at the border. The influx of children, most of whom are from Central America, has overwhelmed the U.S. government. That by law has 72 hours to send children from non-bordering countries to temporary shelters to wait deportation proceedings and reunions with parents or guardians. But the shelters have been overwhelmed for months, leading to a backup of children waiting in crowded detention centers operated by the Customs and Border Protection Agency. On Wednesday following reports of unsanitary living conditions inside the centers, border patrol opened the doors to two of those centers to the press. This facility in Nogales, Arizona is currently home to 840 children from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. Those three countries are the source of the vast majority of migrant children.

Yesterday Vice President Biden traveled to Guatemala to meet with the leaders of those nations as part of the Obama administration`s effort to deal with what the president has called an urgent humanitarian situation. In addition to an effort to ramp up detention and deportation processes, the administration also announced millions of dollars in funding to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras to help stem the tide of migration. The money is intended to provide support and security for the children who are fleeing brutal violence and extreme poverty in their home countries. Joining me now from Washington, D.C., is someone who has heard firsthand the stories of these children. Leslie Velez who is senior protection officer of the United Nations high commissioner for refugees. It`s very nice to have you this morning.

HARRIS-PERRY: So, let me just ask this very clearly, is this an immigration issue or a humanitarian crisis?

VELEZ: This is certainly a humanitarian crisis. What is driving the children out of their home countries in Central America is, as you have said, extreme violence and threats to their lives and to their safety. It`s playing out as an immigration crisis as the crisis over there has now reached U.S. soil. But certainly the situation on the ground is something worth really looking into. And understanding the threat under which these children are living on a daily basis.

HARRIS-PERRY: So help me to understand that a bit because there`s obviously international law, rules, guidance about what counts as the kind of threat that would allow for an asylum seeking situation. So is it simply -- not that this is a small thing -- but discord in a nation or does it have to be an imminent threat to this particular child or this particular child`s family?

VELEZ: Yes, so the refugee convention and international law protects individuals from any state from returning individuals to a place where they fear for their lives and freedoms. So, in particular, under the refugee definition when individuals are targeted and threatened and persecuted on account of protected grounds being race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or a particular social group, then they would certainly qualify to meet the refugee definition and in many cases these children we found in our report after interviewing 404 of the children from these countries that many of them presented these exact types of concerns. So 58 percent of them, almost 60 percent of the children are in this situation.

HARRIS-PERRY: OK. Let me take you to Senator John McCain who visited the Nogales institution that we were - the detention center that we were just talking about had this to say afterwards. Let`s take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R) ARIZONA: Right now over radio and television in these Central American countries they`re telling them that they can get here and stay.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS-PERRY: So Senator McCain is saying that there is information going to these home countries saying that if they come, the children can stay. "USA Today`s" headline says that media in Central America is actually saying don`t go to the United States. Is media messaging in these nations responsible for the movement of these unaccompanied children?

VELEZ: When individuals who fear for their lives and they`re in the mode where they`re trying to survive, information like that might be an impetus to start to move, but this is typical of what the U.N. Refugee Agency sees all over the world. So the first to leave, it`s a slow start like the exodus leaving Syria. It`s a slow start. The arc then begins to sharpen with the first people leaving are usually children and women.

HARRIS-PERRY: And why? Why are children traveling alone so frequently in this case?

VELEZ: It`s really sad. We spoke to one 15-year-old kid who came and he said I actually didn`t want to leave. I didn`t want to leave my mother alone. But he felt that he was forced to do this trip because he wanted to protect his little sister, who is only 12. She had already been sexually assaulted by criminal armed groups in their area. And so he felt really bad about abandoning his mother, but felt compelled to protect his sister on what he knew was a dangerous journey.

HARRIS-PERRY: You have more than 400 stories of having interviewed these young people. You told us one. Does telling those stories - do you think that it will change either the decisions made by policymakers or potentially change the minds of Americans as citizens who might then bring a different kind of pressure on our elected officials?

VELEZ: Yes, absolutely. It changed us as we saw this. Back in 2006 when we did a similar study and a much smaller percentage of the children had these types of concerns, but then for 404 stories to come at us with such graphic detail and such heart-wrenching - just it was so compelling for us, which is why the U.N. refugee agency as the humanitarian agency mandated to protect refugees has been activated. And we stand with the governments in solidarity. This is a challenge regionally. It`s a regional problem that requires regional solutions. The U.S. has already made some very positive steps. But there`s a lot more work to be done in order to protect these children.

HARRIS-PERRY: Leslie Velez in Washington, D.C., I appreciate your work and for keeping our eyes on not only the immigration politics here, but specifically on the humanitarian crisis. Thank you.

VELEZ: Thanks so much.

Up next, when is giving a $25 million gift controversial? Well, when it comes from the Koch brothers?

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HARRIS-PERRY: A couple of months ago I began writing a monthly column for "Essence Magazine." Since joining, I have learned quite a bit about the 44-year old publication launched in 1970. "Essence" was a groundbreaking news and entertainment magazine devoted to black women. "Essence" has since become a household name expanding its reach beyond the written word and delving into music with the Essence Festival and digital media with Essence Studios. But do you know who helped get the magazine on its feet financially during the first few years of its founding? None other than "Playboy" magazine creator Hugh Hefner. That`s right, in the early `70s, the magazine mogul whose publication was mainly known for showing naked or nearly naked women was an early investor in the magazine dedicated to empowering women of color. In fact, the "Playboy" provided the largest private investment "Essence" had seen at that time, the $250,000 check from M. Playboy helped the magazine "Essence" that is, stay afloat after its first copies hit the stands.

But Hef isn`t is the only wealthy benefactor who seems to have diverse interests. The Koch brothers, the billionaire industrial tycoons are perhaps best known for their endorsements of conservative causes like their new super-PAC called Freedom Partners Action Fund. The Super -PAC plans to devote more than $15 million in support of 2014 midterm contenders who oppose big government. But outside of politics, the Koch brothers have also made a number of sizable charitable donations. In 2007 David Koch, a prostate cancer survivor, gave MIT $100 million for cancer research. In 2013 the same Koch brother gave New York Presbyterian Hospital $100 million to create a new ambulatory care center. Here in New York you`re going to see the Koch name inside of the Museum of Natural History and at Lincoln Center. Whatever you think of their politics, there`s simply no denying that the Kochs are huge benefactors. But the charitable Koch donation that really has people talking now is the $25 million contribution to the UNCF, United Negro College Fund, announced this month. The donation, which is the fifth largest in UNCF`s history, will help fund a scholarship program. In a statement Charles Koch said "increasing well-being by helping people improve their lives has long been our focus. Our partnership with UNCF will provide promising students with new educational opportunities that will help them reach their full potential. We have tremendous respect for UNCF and we are hopeful this investment will further its effectiveness in helping students pursuing their dreams. But the donation has sparked something of a side eye or at least a raised eyebrow with critics citing the Koch`s public support for conservative causes that have potentially negative consequences for communities of color, like voter I.D. laws. This begs the question, are political causes that can hamper a voting bloc and charitable contributions that might aid it mutually exclusive? Joining me now is Walter Kimbrough, President of Dillard University, one of UNCF`s 37 member, historically black colleges and university. So, President Kimbrough, are you going to take that dirty Koch money?

(LAUGHTER)

WALTER KIMBROUGH, PRESIDENT, DILLARD UNIVERSITY: Yes, and I`ll tell you why. Let`s put it in perspective. In 2011 we started to see this perfect storm for HVC use in all of higher education. We lost summer Pell Grant money. So, we are going in the summer of 2012, no money for summer Pell grants. October 2011, Department of Ed changed the way that they looked at parent plus loans and so, that has had an impact on HBCU, which particularly to the tune of $150 million a year that families don`t have access to. On my campus that`s 2 million total that we`ve lost. So, we`ve lost all of this money in the last few years and I`m sort of like TLC singing, what about my friends? No one else is coming to our aid.

HARRIS-PERRY: So this is not a small thing. What you have just laid out in the Obama administration`s parent plus loan policies, and in the Pell grant policies, and these are both Obama administration and, of course, the current Congress` policies, you are saying this has had a negative impact on HBCUs and Koch is good for them .

KIMBROUGH: Right.

HARRIS-PERRY: Why I shouldn`t I go vote for - the candidate supported by the Kochs?

KIMBROUGH: Right. And that - there will be people who will make that distinction. In the beginning of Obama`s administration, though, he did add a new program, a title three program that has provided a great deal of money for our institutions in particular. So, one of the things that I`ve always questioned is that, we have got to make sure and continue to make sure we have the right people around the president so he hears the true stories and not some of the stories that will create policies that hurt these institutions as well. Because that wouldn`t be the intent. And - earlier on in the presidency, it was controversial to say, I`m going to - HBCU with a billion dollars, and then these other things that are happening, so we have got to continue to do our work to make sure that everyone knows what our needs are and that the president gets the right information.

HARRIS-PERRY: OK, it also seems to me that there is a long tradition, particularly in African-American communities that are under-resourced for a variety of reasons, right? So, if you look at HBCUs, often it was nurses, teachers, that we were able to educate because those were the jobs open. Those are not the kind of folks that have tons of alumni dollars.

KIMBROUGH: Right. Yeah. Exactly.

HARRIS-PERRY: So, does that mean then there just simply is a necessity for HPCUs to look beyond sort of in community folks for giving?

KIMBROUGH: Right. And that`s always been the case for HBCUs. There have been a broad range of people who supported our causes. As you - in the case we haven`t had a political litmus test of who can give to us. Of if you go back and you look at, you know, people who have been involved in "Essence" and other organizations that people don`t even really understand the histories of, that there have been people whose politics we might not agree with, but in terms of advancing young people we are all on the same page. So let`s focus on that.

HARRIS-PERRY: All right. OK. But then let`s take it to a real moment right now. I want to listen to Mr. Leon Jenkins, who`s the head of the an NAACP chapter in California that was taking some gifts from Mr. Donald Sterling. Let`s listen to this for a moment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LEON JENKINS, FORMER PRESIDENT, NAACP: The revelation that Mr. Sterling may have made comments in a phone conversation that was reminiscent of the ugly time in American history that contains elements of segregation and racial discrimination demands that the Los Angeles NAACP intention to honor Mr. Sterling for a lifetime body of work must be withdrawn and the donation that he`s given to Los Angeles NAACP will be returned.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS-PERRY: So, there he is, the former head of the Los Angeles NAACP saying, all right, now that we know these politics, we`re going to have to give the money back. Was that just because there was media pressure to do so or is that a reasonable way for an organization to behave?

KIMBROUGH: Well, I think for them there was a direct correlation in terms of some Mr. Sterling`s actions. So, I mean there was a lawsuit settlement because of some of his direct actions. It`s not that he`s giving money to campaigns. Because even though the Koch brothers have given a lot of money for campaigns, the people still have the right to vote. They spend a lot of money trying to defeat Obama in 2008 and 2012 and they wasted a lot of money. So, now they finally decided, well, let`s invest in something, so we`re going to invest in these young people.

HARRIS-PERRY: I mean it`s a tough one. You know, I certainly know that there are commercials that run on the network that pays my salary who we are also then critical of some of their policies and practices on the show. And so I guess what I want to ask, then the final one is this, can you still be in the classrooms and in the administration of the HBCUs critical of the kinds of policies that Koch money represents politically even while taking Koch money for the educational aspect?

KIMBROUGH: Right. Yeah, I mean if there were some kind of written statement that I would have to sign to prevent me from being critical of those policies, not of them as people, I don`t know them as people, I wouldn`t take the money because I have to be true and I have to make sure our students are doing that. But I still understand the big picture. Talked about that, in the future our enemies aren`t going to be poor whites, or people who were for segregation. It was going to be the concern with people who are for desegregation, but not full integration. It`s not going to be George Wallace and Lester Maddox as our enemies, but the subtleties of our liberal friends who wine and dine with us and take us to the swankiest hotels but they really implement a discrimination via power and money. So, we have to understand that we`re going to have some alliances with folks that ideologically we might have issues with, but in the end those are the folks that have continued to step up for us. And we need it. And my students are saying, hey, we need the money.

HARRIS-PERRY: Hey, Walter Kimbrough, walking a tough line. IT is a hard job to be the president of the university where resources are a real thing. I appreciate you being here today.

KIMBROUGH: Thank you.

HARRIS-PERRY: Coming up, a deep dive on the Deep South and the primary that seems like a prime time soap opera. Mississippi, golly. Next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARRIS-PERRY: Do you want to hear about the most edge of your seat, out-of-control, most unexpected political race of 2014 so far? Let me take you to Mississippi where these two guys are vying for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate. On the left six-term Senator Thad Cochran, supported by much of the state`s GOP establishment. On the right, State Senator Chris McDaniel, supported by the Tea Party set and Sarah Palin types. On Tuesday they go head-to-head in a primary run-off. Now there was already a primary on June 3. But neither man won a majority thanks to a dark horse third candidate who took home less than two percent of the vote. So according to Mississippi law, they have to go another round. And because this is beat red Mississippi, whoever wins the GOP nomination will be the heavy favorite to win the whole thing in November. This is juicy stuff, people. McDaniel led Cochran by about 1,400 votes in the first primary. Now, the run-off is entirely unpredictable. The turnout is expected to be even lower than that of the first primary, when about 319,000 people voted, that`s about 17 percent of all registered voters. It is anybody`s game. And the desperation is palpable. Exhibit A, Brett Favre. The former Green Bay Packers quarterback and likely future hall of famer Brett Favre was born and raised in Mississippi. He this week cut an ad for Senator Cochran.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRET FAVRE: I`ve learned through football that strong leadership can be the difference between winning and losing. And when it comes to our state`s future, trust me, Mississippi can win. And win big with Thad Cochran as our strong voice in Washington.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS-PERRY: Which led the conservative blog red state which has endorsed McDaniel to surmise that the ad had something to do with Favre`s relationship with another Cochran supporter, former Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour who in 2012 cleared the criminal record of Favre`s brother who in 1997 had pleaded guilty to charges related to the drunk driving death of a friend. Barbour denies any involvement with the advertisement. Then there`s the bestiality of it all. No, seriously. The suggestion of bestiality, the misconstruing of a nonsexual harassment of animals into bestiality. OK, let me explain. Last week Senator Cochran held an event at a hospital in Hattiesburg and tried to connect with his audience by reminiscing about childhood Christmases spent at his father`s family in a rural area near Hattiesburg. And he said, quote, it was fun. It was an adventure to be out there in the country and see what goes on, picking up pecans and all that kinds of indecent things with animals. Now the ledger said it was clear that Cochran was joking about innocuously harassing wildlife or livestock, you know, cow tipping maybe, but that didn`t stop the Now or Never PAC, which is supporting McDaniel from airing this radio ad.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UM: Tell Thad Cochran you`re no farm animal and you`re not going to take being on the receiving end of this so-called fun any longer.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS-PERRY: I`m going to just leave that where it is. And then perhaps some of bizarre twists of this knocked down drag out. Senator Cochran is asking African-Americans, who typically don`t vote Republican in Mississippi to come out for him on Tuesday. The pro-Cochran super-PAC Mississippi Conservative reportedly is paying leaders like Ronnie Crudup, who is the senior pastor and founder of the New Horizon Church International in Jackson, Mississippi, to encourage his fellow African-Americans to vote in the Republican primary for Senator Cochran. Another PAC linked to Crudup`s church has put advertisements for Cochran in African-American newspaper and black Democrats who support Cochran say African-Americans have a vested interest in keeping him in the Senate seat because over his 35 years in the Senate, he has delivered federal money for African-American districts including funding for health centers and historically black colleges. So, to understand how bizarre this is, consider the Mississippi`s party lines are also so stark that they become racial lines probably more so than in any other state. 89 percent of white voters in Mississippi voted for Mitt Romney in 2012. 30 points higher than the national average. And according to 2008 exit polls 96 percent of Mississippi Republicans are white while 75 percent of the state`s Democrats are African-American. Only two percent of Republican primary voters in 2012 were black. Two percent. That racial divide goes way, way back all the way to Jim Crow and beyond. And the madness that is Mississippi is something we`re going to talk about next as we talk about the summer 50 years ago that helped bring an end to the Jim Crow era.

There is, as always, more "Nerdland" and less bestiality at the top of the hour.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARRIS-PERRY: Welcome back. I`m Melissa Harris-Perry.

In 1964 in Mississippi, fewer than 7 percent of African-Americans were registered to vote and that was no accident. White Democrats have built an effective machine to keep black residents away from the polls despite being guaranteed the right to vote in the Constitution nearly 100 years before. To register to vote, African-Americans had to pass nearly impossible literacy tests. They had to pay annual poll taxes, which were out of reach for many. And the state disenfranchised those convicted of certain crimes, crimes chosen because they were considered to be those most likely to be committed by African-Americans.

Civil rights workers had been trying to chip away at this disenfranchisement throughout the early 1960s. They were led by Robert Moses of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. A civil rights legend who was actually going to join us here in the studio later this hour. And they met with great resistance.

Activists were murdered for their efforts. But slowly, activists were drawing the national spotlight towards Mississippi. Cue Freedom Summer. Fifty years ago, when 1,000 volunteers, many of them white northern college students, converged on Mississippi to help black voters overcome those obstacles and register to vote, they were largely unsuccessful.

Although 17,000 people attempted to register to vote, only 1,600 were actually added to voter roles. But what from Freedom Summer did was prove a crucial point that literacy tests and the poll taxes and every thing else were actually standards that could be met. That the goal was to prevent African-Americans from voting, full stop, that no matter what you did to circumvent the means to that goal, the goal itself of total black disenfranchisement would remain constant. Freedom Summer proved that you could not give people a voice in the political process just by teaching them how to pass literacy tests the. It proved you could not play by rules and win. Instead you had to change the rules.

One year later, thanks in part to the national spotlight Freedom Summer showed in Mississippi, thanks to the mountains of evidence generated by those activists trying and failing to register people to vote, Congress passed and President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act. The Voting Rights Act abolished literacy tests and other instruments, both subtle and blunt, to suppress the black vote and sent federal officials to register voters and observe elections. It would be difficult to overstate the importance of the VRA and what a civil war and constitutional amendment could not do that VRA did.

In 1964, 6.7 percent of African-Americans in Mississippi were registered to vote. Five years later, 66.5 percent were registered. In addition to abolishing literacy tests, the VRA granted power to the federal government to prevent state and local officials from putting new discriminatory practices into place, a power known as preclearance. Under the VRA, the U.S. attorney general must approve any changes to election laws in states, counties and townships that had a history of disenfranchisement before those changes can go into effect.

Preclearance was key because suing states after they discriminated didn`t work. Before the VRA, the Justice Department had sued states and jurisdictions repeatedly for voting rates violations after the fact, including 30 lawsuits in Mississippi alone between 1961 and 1965, to very little effect. The VRA laid out a formula for determining which places could not be trusted to maintain fair voting laws based on their history. And as of 2013, nine states were covered including, of course, Mississippi.

Those are the states in bright yellow on this map, and as were counties and towns in six more states shown here in a darker yellow. It is that crucial part of the Voting Rights Act, that formula that the United States Supreme Court struck down one year ago. The Supreme Court ruled the formula had become unconstitutionally outdated and without the foreign -- without a list of jurisdictions that would require preclearance -- well, there`s no preclearance.

But there`s a solution. Congress can replace the formula. Who would have guessed that? Nearly an entire year later, Congress has failed to do so.

Yes, everyone would have guessed that. OK, in that year of inaction, states that were once covered by preclearance have practically clamored over each other to impose voting restrictions. Within hours of the Supreme Court decision, Texas announced it would immediately implement a voter I.D law that had been blocked by a federal court, North Carolina enacted a mind-boggling series of restrictions that reduced early voting, eliminated same day and preregistration and added strict voter photo ID requirements. Alabama and Mississippi enacted voter ID laws. Florida has cut back early voting days. Virginia now requires voter ID and new limits on voter registration drives.

These states joined a tidal wave started in 2010 of mostly Republican state legislatures putting restrictions on the vote. That`s not to say there hasn`t been an effort to plug the dam, of bipartisan, bicameral group of legislators has proposed a new formula which would place states under preclearance if they have five voting rights violations in the past 15 years. Four states would require preclearance right off the bat.

You guessed them, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. Despite bipartisan support, the bill has not budged although its sponsors are hoping to break through. Senator Patrick Leahy will hold a full judiciary committee hearing on the bill this coming Wednesday. The bill`s future remains uncertain.

House Speaker John Boehner has been noncommittal at best. Majority Leader Eric Cantor, remember him, he was said to have been working closely behind the scenes to bring the bill up for a vote. But now, Cantor is out. And even if the bill were to pass in its current form, it leaves a gaping hole, disenfranchisement as a result of voter ID laws would not count as a voting rights violation.

Joining me now, two individuals working feverishly to protect and restore voting rights across the country: Judith Browne Dianis, co-director of the Advancement Project, and Dale Ho, director of ACLU`s Voting Rights Project.

So nice to have you all here.

JUDITH BROWNE DIANIS, ADVANCEMENT PROJECT: Thanks.

DALE HO, ACLU: Thanks a lot.

Judith, in this past year this tidal wave, is there any hope that Congress is going to come up with a new formula to stem this tide?

BROWNE DIANIS: Well, I mean, you know, the problem is that the Voting Rights Act really -- it served as a deterrent, right? So, that`s what opened the floodgates and so now, we`re in this moment are where this bipartisan effort has to happen, right?

We have a dysfunctional Congress. But at same time, this is the Voting Rights Act. Next year marks the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Voting Rights Act.

So I think we`re very hopeful this is the first step, this hearing. And, look, we have a lot of evidence that voting discrimination still exists and that`s going to be before Congress and there have been hearings across the country. So, we think we`re building the record and we`re going to get something passed.

HARRIS-PERRY: So, come back to Congress for just one more second before we move on. And that really is about Cantor, because my very first thought when I heard about that surprise loss, was OK, there might be lots of reasons to be pleased for some folks on the left that Eric Cantor will no longer be in the House of Representatives. But I have heard from multiple members of the CDC that Cantor was working towards getting a new formula.

BROWNE DIANIS: That`s right, he was. We`ll have to find somebody else. I mean, there are other Republicans who are stepping up to the plate, who have been at the plate for a while. And so, I think we`re just going to have to rely on them because, again, this is as American as apple pie. This is democracy. We`re making sure that everyone is equal. And so, we think they`ll come along.

HARRIS-PERRY: So, tell me, Dale, particularly from a kind of litigation standpoint, if we know that preclearance was serving as a deterrent but for the moment is basically toothless because we can`t figure out where preclearance would apply, why can`t section 2 do the work that preclearance did before? I mean, sort of immediately in Texas, the attorney general came out and said, all right, we got this. We`re going to take Texas to court.

Is there a reason to think that we`re in a `61 to `65 moment where the lawsuits won`t be effective?

HO: Well, you know, we obviously do not have the same kind of tool we had with preclearance, but we`ve been remarkably effective, I think, fighting back against these voter suppression mechanisms, right? So, not just Section 2, but also state constitutional law challenges to the Advancement Project of the ACLU, join forces, litigated, knocked out Pennsylvania`s voter ID law under the state constitution. Governor Corbett is not appealing that decision.

We used Section 2 again together in Wisconsin to knock out Wisconsin`s voter ID law. So we are, I think, pretty successful right now. The thing is Wisconsin, even before that decision came out --

HARRIS-PERRY: Preclearance.

HO: Absolutely not. To your point about the necessity of preclearance, everyone who saw that trial knew Wisconsin had no shot, they had no evidence of voter fraud and we have hundreds of thousands of people who are going to be disenfranchised by it. So, when the legislature started talking about changing the ID law, right, which is exactly what places like Mississippi were doing between 1961 and 1965. You start to win a lawsuit. And then they change the law. So, you have to start all over again. That`s why we needed preclearance and why we needed to get --

BROWNE DIANIS: Right. And the importance is that it stopped discrimination before it happened, which can impact the outcome of an election. We can`t wait until the end.

HARRIS-PERRY: Can I just tell you I am moving to North Carolina from Louisiana, for goodness sake.

BROWNE DIANIS: And we`re glad. We need more progressive voters in North Carolina.

HARRIS-PERRY: But I may not get to vote because -- can I tell you when I went to get my driver`s license, the list of things necessary to get my driver`s license is, and I am not exaggerating --

BROWNE DIANIS: We will represent you.

HARRIS-PERRY: It`s more than what it took to get a passport to travel around the world, to drive around North Carolina. It was the first time that I felt in a very personal way just how high that barrier is because obviously I have all the resources in the world to find my original birth certificate, my original Social Security card, my passport, my driver`s license from another state.

Are judges looking at this and saying, come on, this is not about protecting the vote?

BROWNE DIANIS: Yes, I think they are. I mean, the stories of people who are impacted is what wins the day, right? In North Carolina, our lead plaintiff is Rosanell Eaton, 93 years old, someone who`s one of the first African-Americans to vote, to register to vote in the state of North Carolina in the 1940s.

She had to take a literacy test where she had to recite the preamble to the Constitution. She had a cross burned on her front lawn and here she is again fighting for voting rights. She is someone who will be disenfranchised under this new law in North Carolina.

So, those are the kinds of cases because we can`t -- we have to take it away from the law and get back to regular everyday Americans that want to have a voice in our democracy.

HARRIS-PERRY: Do you think, given that kind of framing, and I know that the politics side is less your side, do you think Americans -- because part of what turns the tide and gets the VRA is Americans see Bloody Sunday. Americans see what happens in Freedom Summer with the death of the civil rights workers and they just say, you know, this is not us.

We might want to win our side but we`re not going to win in this way. Have we started to turn a corner where ordinary Americans of all ideological positions will say, look, these kinds of restrictions are just not who we are as a 21st century people.

HO: I really hope so, Melissa. Ten years ago I think when the voter ID issue started percolating, I think a lot of people just didn`t understand why that would be a problem because a lot of people, most people, have some form of ID. So, for them, it doesn`t seem like a big burden.

And I think courts when they first started hearing about the issues thought to themselves, judges who were pretty privileged people think to themselves, well, I have one of these IDs in my pocket right now. But there`s been a really, really I think successful education process, the litigation has been really important for that to showcase these individuals like Miss Eaton who, you know, for them it actually is a significant burden and they`re a significant portion of the population.

HARRIS-PERRY: I mean, Nevada just won this among the voters, right, the turning back of the Nevada proposal wasn`t a legal fight, right? It was a voter fight.

BROWNE DIANIS: That`s right. And the thing is that Americans believe in early voting. They believe that voting should be easy, it should not be hard. They believe in free, fair, and accessible elections.

And so, here you have these legislatures trying to make it harder and you have no evidence of the thing that it was supposed to be solving, voter fraud. In fact, the president`s election commission came out with a report saying that fraud really did not exist. All these court cases say there was no reason for this.

So, we`re starting to pull back the cover on the motivations behind it.

HARRIS-PERRY: Yes, I mean, it`s a solution for a problem that doesn`t seem to exist, and when we have Thom Tillis, who`s running in North Carolina, having said in 2012 something about sort of traditional voters, by which he meant white American voters in North Carolina, sort of losing population to those who are African-American and Latino, it does feel in those kinds of moments as though it is racially motivated.

Stick with us. We have more on this, because when we talk about legislators who are trying to reduce the vote, it is time to go to Ohio. So, stay right there.

Up next, the state that may be ground zero in the voting rights battle. We`re going to take you away from Mississippi, up the river to Ohio, where an important campaign is under way right now.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARRIS-PERRY: Let me read to you a letter to the editor. It is from June 13th, "New York Times." It comes from Ohio Secretary of State John Husted who, according to his own Web site biography is, quote, "responsible for oversight of elections in one of the most hotly contested swing states. In Ohio, Husted writes to "The Times", "We make it easier to vote and provide many options to accommodate all Ohioans equally."

His letter ends with, "Ohio is a leader in voter access. We will it continue to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat. As secretary of state, I will spend my time encouraging Ohio voters to use their many options to vote rather than trying to scare people into believing that it`s hard. That`s the real voter suppression."

Nope, nope. The real voter suppression is things like cutting early voting and ways that dramatically impact African-American vote, cuts that John Husted fought for all the way to the Supreme Court where he was rejected weeks before the 2012 elections. Cuts that a federal court again rejected just last week, this time permanently, ordering early voting to be restored in the three days before Election Day.

But Ohio activists are not sitting idly by, relying solely on the courts to protect them. They are taking action trying to get a Voter Bill of Rights added to the state constitution by way of a ballot measure this November. To do so, they need to provide 385,000 signatures to the board of elections by July 2nd.

Joining me now from Cincinnati, Ohio, the woman leading that grassroots campaign, Ohio State Representative Alicia Reece.

So nice to see you.

STATE REP. ALICIA REECE (D), OHIO: Thank you for having me.

HARRIS-PERRY: All right. So start by telling me what this Voter Bill of Rights provides.

REECE: Well, the Voter Bill of Rights takes our current rights that we had before Secretary Husted started messing with early voting, before the Republican-led legislature started trying to reduce access to the ballot.

What it does is put the voting rights in the Constitution so that we don`t have to worry about who is in office. It`s not term limited. You know, the same person that you just talked about was in the legislature who, after the Bush debacle when Ohio had a black eye, was part of a bipartisan group that said, yes, we need to have early voting. Yes, we will count provisional ballots. Yes, let`s make it more accessible.

But after the election of President Obama and the re-election of President Obama where large groups of African-Americans, Latinos, and low-income families and working moms came out to vote, all of a sudden they said, well, we want to change the rules. And so, that`s why we want it in the Constitution so that it`s protected, it`s put there by the people, and you can`t change it unless you go back to the people.

So, we have started a people`s movement that starts in Ohio, ground zero, as you talked about, with something that can go across the country just like we started in Selma, but we ended up around the country with the Voting Rights Act.

HARRIS-PERRY: Speaking of the people, as you`ve been out there working to get these hundreds of thousands of signatures together, tell me, what are people saying on the ground about it? Because what Husted is saying in that "New York Times" editorial is that conversations about voter suppression somehow keep people from the polls. Are you hearing that sort of, oh, it`s too hard to vote so I won`t go?

REECE: That`s not what I`m hearing. Right in my district, we have a polling location. My polling location, actually, that took two years and $1 million in lawsuits in order for people`s votes to be counted.

What I`m hearing from people and the message they`ve been saying all along is that there is a disconnect between the state house and your house. So what we`re hearing on the ground is not what we`re heaing at the state house.

And because they have drawn the lines, they kind of rule it. And that`s why we have to go to the Constitution. The group ALEC is out and they are dismantling voting rights state by state. We need a state by state strategy and we believe the Voter Bill of Rights could be a model that could be across the country because it allows now every day people. You determine what your voting rights are and the elected official officials have to check in with you, the people, before they start to take those things away.

So, I`m hearing frustration. I`m hearing people wanting to fight back. And this is an opportunity for them to have an opportunity to have a voice and to fight back.

So I`m hearing that definitely the secretary of state is not connected with the people. And certainly, you know, we`ve got Nina Turner and hopefully will win that election as secretary of state. More importantly, also, have voting rights in the Constitution, so we`re protected by the Constitution.

HARRIS-PERRY: OK. Stay with us. Don`t go away.

But, Judith, I want to come on this question of instantiating voting rights in the Constitution, I think many Americans don`t know that it`s not in our Constitution at a federal level either.

I want to listen for a moment to former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi talking about the political problems of getting the VRA formula renewed.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), HOUSE MINORITY LEADER: Under the current leadership on the Republican side we`ve had a shutdown of government. We have not passed immigration. We have not passed the Voting Rights Act, which has always been bipartisan. We have the votes for the immigration bill. It passed the Senate in a bipartisan way.

So, I don`t know how things could get worse than the obstruction that is already here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS-PERRY: Is this the only way to get around those kinds of politics?

BROWNE DIANIS: Well, I think we`re going to be able to get the Voting Rights Act amendment done because, again, this is just fundamental. We should not have discrimination in our democracy, right?

Now, getting to a right to vote constitutional amendment. You know, that`s where we need to be. We need to make sure we have national standards around voting, Americans support that, 88 percent of Americans support national standards.

We need to make sure that the courts understand that it should be protected just like we protect free speech and gun right rights. But that`s going to take a long haul because the right to vote has always been a political football. It`s been about restricting the voice of people who those in power don`t want to hear from. That`s how you maintain power is to keep other people silent and that`s why it`s been manipulated.

HARRIS-PERRY: So, Dale, let me ask you, are you surprised that I am sitting here talking with someone who holds office in Ohio as ground zero because we started with our, like, Mississippi is kind of the obvious place where you would expect this. Given that it has now moved to Ohio, as you said to Pennsylvania, should the new formula, whatever it is, move away from and look at the former confederate states and towards sort of where the new politics are occurring?

HO: It`s definitely all over the country now, right? So we do need a strong bill that will attack voting discrimination wherever it takes place. But until we get that legislation done, we have to take this out in the courts. That`s where we`re fighting.

That`s why we`ve sued Ohio over early voting cuts. The judge did the right thing restoring the last three days of early voting but it doesn`t solve all of the problems that we`ve pointed to in our lawsuit. They got rid of the first week of early voting, which was the same day registration in period.

They also arbitrarily got rid of all evenings during the early voting period, right? And all other Sundays other than the Sunday before election day, even though state statute requires early voting to be possible on those days.

So, Secretary of State Husted is not finished yet. We`re not finished with him either.

HARRIS-PERRY: Thank you. Thank you to Dale Ho and to Judith Browne Dianis. Also to State Representative Alicia Reece in Cincinnati, Ohio, thank you for giving us kind of another way of beginning to think about how this will be addressed.

Now, Judith is going to stick around with us for a bit. But coming up, the civil rights icon who 50 years ago brought us Freedom Summer. Bob Moses is coming to Nerdland. I did a dance about this earlier in the week.

Up next, my letter of the week.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARRIS-PERRY: When Eric Cantor announced last week he would vacate his House majority leader position effective July 31, House Republicans scrambled to figure out just who would take his spot. In Thursday, they voted for his successor.

So, it seems like an opportune time to send a letter to the newly minted House majority leader-elect.

Dear Congressman Kevin McCarthy,

It`s me, Melissa. Your first words out of the gate seem promising.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA), MAJORITY LEADER-ELECT: I`ll make one promise. I will work every single day to make sure this conference has the courage to lead with the wisdom to listen. And we`ll turn this country around.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS-PERRY: OK. So I actually kind of like the sound of that because courage is exactly what this conference needs, as in the courage to do what is right and lead, which is exactly what the American public wants right now, especially when it comes to the issue of comprehensive immigration reform.

According to a recent joint survey by Brookings and the Public Religion Research Institute, 62 percent of Americans are in favor of finding a way for the undocumented immigrants already here to become citizens, providing that they fulfill certain requirements. And 17 percent support them becoming permanent legal residents but not citizens.

Not only do everyday citizens want Congress to lead on the issue of comprehensive immigration reform but so do key organizations and leaders. In fact, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, one of the biggest lobbying groups that represents business interests and also generally supports Republican candidates not only lifted passing immigration reform as one of their agenda priorities this year but the CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Thomas Donahue, said if the Republicans don`t pass immigration reform, then they, quote, "shouldn`t bother to run a candidate in 2016."

I mean, think about that. Think about who the voters are. Yikes!

But the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is the least of your worries because now the big dogs, the influential Republican donor class and thought leaders are weighing in and telling the Republican Party you must lead on this issue.

Sheldon Adelson, anyone? You may have heard of him. He`s the man who donated $93 million to Republican aligned PACs in the 2012 election and recently wrote an article entitled, "Let`s deal with reality and pass immigration reform", which said, "As a Republican, it`s my view efforts to complete immigration reform should be led by our party. Some on the outer fringes of the GOP may disagree, but the truth is we are humans first and partisans second. Frankly, the Democrats don`t have a monopoly on having hearts."

Now if you thought the influential Republican figure supporting immigration reform ended with Adelson, think again. There`s also this guy, Rupert Murdock, the executive chairman of News Corp., had a thing or two to say in his recent article entitled "Immigration reform, can`t wait."

He went right at what people are looking for when it comes to immigration reform, writing, "People are looking for leadership. Those who stand for something and offer a vision for how to take America forward and keep our nation economically competitive, the most immediate ways to revitalize our economy is by passing immigration r reform."

Leadership, Congressman McCarthy, leadership is what Americans want on this issue. And as the newly elected House majority leader, you are the second most senior official in the House and are uniquely positioned to help make that happen versus your previous job as majority whip where you specifically served to communicate the majority opinion and create consensus.

But now, you develop the calendar as the chief scheduler for the floor and decide when to bring which bills to a vote. You serve as the lead speaker for the majority party during floor debates, and you assist the president or speaker of the house with program development, policy formation, and policy decisions.

In other words, the power is in your hands when had it comes to setting the agenda for a vote on comprehensive immigration reform. There are nearly 12 million lives hanging in the balance as they wait for you to act on their behalf.

Come on. Do us a favor, Congressman McCarthy, lead.

Sincerely, Melissa.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARRIS-PERRY: Fifty years ago today, June 21, 1964, three young men, volunteers from the Freedom Summer movement to register voters and educate youth in Mississippi disappeared.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TV ANCHOR: There is some mystery and some fear concerning three of the civil rights workers, two whites from New York City and a Negro from Mississippi. Police say they arrested the three men for speeding yesterday but released them after they posted bond. They have not been heard from since.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS-PERRY: James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, all under 25. The men had been pulled over for a traffic violation and arrested, then released in the middle of the night. The car the three men had been driving was found two days later burned. An NBC news broadcast described it as gutted by fire.

President Johnson called Mississippi Senator James Eastland to see what could be done.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

LYNDON JOHNSON, THEN-U.S. PRESIDENT: Jim, we have three kids missing down there. What can I do about it?

Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner`s bodies were found 44 days later about buried beneath a 15-foot earthen dam. Eight men were eventually convicted. They included these two men.

On the right, county sheriff deputy Cecil Price, the man who had arrested Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner, and who alerted the KKK to their whereabouts and held them in jail just long enough for the Klan to arrive, follow the men as they left jail and make sure they never made it home.

On the left is local preacher Ed Ray Killen, who wasn`t convicted until 2005, on this day, June 21st, exactly 41 years after the crime.

The deaths of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner shocked the nation. The three men had been participating in the 1964 Freedom Summer when nearly 1,000 students, mostly white and college-educated, came to rural Mississippi to help register black voters and educate youth for the summer. Part of the strategy of the Freedom Summer was to open up Mississippi, to show the world what was happening there. And local organizers realized they could do that by bringing in white young people.

In a recent piece for theroot.com, civilian rights historian Blair Kelly writes Freedom Summer then was a calculated effort to get the nation to pay attention to what was happening in Mississippi when more than 1,000 college-aged children of elite white Northerners were called on to come to Mississippi, the nation took notice.

For Freedom Summer volunteers in Mississippi, the murders drove home the risk of their work were real, that the work was dangerous. The phrase voter registration in our contemporary moment may evoke images of rock the vote rallies or college students with clipboards, but in 1964, Mississippi voter registration was direct action. It was political protest directly defying the systemic denial of political power even at the level of one vote, to black Americans. Denial that was exercise through law, and enforced through acts of terror.

The director of the Freedom Summer of 1964 was a young man named Bob Moses. He had spent the past three -- the previous three years living in Mississippi, listening to members of the community, hearing their concerns and building political strategy around their needs. In the process, he was imprisoned, shot at and brutally beaten. People he worked with like local farmer Herbert Lee who drove Moses around to find have volunteers were murdered.

That summer, 1964,there were 30 bombings in Mississippi, 35 church burnings, 35 people were shot. But the constant and unwavering threat of terror did not halt the mission of the Freedom Summer, 17,000 black citizens attempted to register to vote, 30 Freedom schools were opened, offering education and political empowerment to black youth and rural Mississippi communities and the imperative political participation of black citizens were put in the national spotlight.

Joining me next here is the man who directed the Freedom Summer movement and whose civil rights legacy continues today. I`ll be talking to Bob Moses after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BOB MOSES, CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST: We hope to send into Mississippi this summer, upwards of 1,000 students from all around the country who will engage in what we are calling freedom school, community center program, voter registration activity, and in general a program designed to open up Mississippi to the country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS-PERRY: That was a scene from the upcoming documentary "Freedom Summer" premiering on PBS June 24. The person in that scene is Bob Moses, then just 29 years old, leader of the 1964 freedom summer campaign.

In the 50 years since Moses has continued his civil rights work, and I am honored to welcome Bob Moses to the show.

Also with us is Judith Browne Dianis, co-director of the Advancement Project.

Thank you so much for being here.

MOSES: Thanks.

HARRIS-PERRY: I want to ask you about models of leadership that move from the bottom up, the idea of King-based leadership is often what we think of the civil rights movement, the big speeches on the big stages.

MOSES: Right, right.

HARRIS-PERRY: Talk to me what you learned in the context of bottom up.

MOSES: So really the person who first demonstrated that was Ella Baker. So what she did was provide a space for the student sit-in leaders and she helped them become the people who owned their movement. So what was happening, remember, there was the NAACP, SCLC and CORE. So, those organizations would have preferred a youth wing of an adult organization. But Ella really held off Wilkins, King in Parma (ph), right, insisted that the students had the right to make their own mistakes, so to speak.

HARRIS-PERRY: That`s pretty formidable, the idea of Baker holding off -- I mean, the names that you give are folks who helped to change the country and yet the idea that she holds them off to develop a different model of leadership.

MOSES: Right, exactly. It was really crucial. And we learned something about what it meant to be an organizer to that, namely that part of the work of organizing was that you create a space for leadership to emerge, a space for something to emerge that you are not going to be the leader of, right? So we took that idea into Mississippi, the big example of that, of course, is the Freedom Democratic Party and Fannie Lou Hamer.

HARRIS-PERRY: Talk to me about when you say that you`re going to create something that you will not be the leader of because I do -- when I think about the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, I think about Fannie Lou Hamer there in Atlantic City talking to the credentials committee of the DNC.

But you`re telling me that, that is a different model of what constitutes who was leading that?

MOSES: Well, in order for Fannie Lou Hamer to emerge as the media person, right, then the media space had to be open. So, part of this issue of organizing is that there are a lot -- so, for example, if you look through "Jet Magazine" from 1961 right up to 1964, right, you don`t see pictures from Mississippi of SNCC people who are leading, right? You see pictures of people that SNCC is working, right, who get projected, right?

So, keeping the media space open was -- so there were a lot of little decisions, right? So actually there was a space there because there`s only so much media space, right?

HARRIS-PERRY: Yes, sir.

MOSES: And so there was a space there that Mrs. Hamer walked into.

HARRIS-PERRY: So help me then to think about that. If I`m connecting that, for example, to the work that Judith Browne Dianis and the Advancement Project are doing, that Moral Mondays is doing in North Carolina right now, has this model of leadership, a Baker, Hamer, Moses model of leadership that says we go in and we build community, we make space but we don`t become the leaders, has that been lost or is that still happening?

MOSES: So that`s a big question, right? So we have a lot of media figures. There`s only so much media space in the country. I mean, when I think about it, we only had three television stations, right, during the `60s.

So, King occupied one media space. And then Malcolm occupied the other media space. And when Malcolm was assassinated, of course the question was, who was going to occupy that space, right?

So, eventually, Stokely Carmichael and Black Power, right, occupied that space. And you can trace from then to now who has occupied which spaces, right? I mean, for some extent Obama occupies the space that King occupied then, right?

HARRIS-PERRY: An interesting way of putting it the not that President Obama is King. Obviously he`s the president but the way in which that version of leader in African-American man body is a space that has to be filled.

MOSES: It has to be filled, right, yes.

So, my only experience now is with the Algebra Project. So we`ve been using algebra as an organizing tool just like we use voting as an organizing tool.

HARRIS-PERRY: And that`s exactly what I want to come back and talk to you on. So, hold it for me for one second. We`re going to take quick commercial break, because I think it`s going to take a moment to explain to people why algebra is a civil rights issue and how the Algebra Project constitutes part of a long tradition of civil rights organizing.

So, stick with us. I`m going to bring you in on this, Judith, as soon as we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARRIS-PERRY: In Bob Moses` book, "Radical Equations," he writes, "We were organizers. Local people, local leadership was at the center of everything we did. Keeping that in mind, it wasn`t always easy, kept us on course. Local folks might not be paying us but we were working for them."

And so that is that model of a different kind of leadership. Explain to me how -- the equations part of radical equations. What is the Algebra Project?

MOSES: So, what we`re looking at is a transition from industrial to information age technologies. And so, industrial technologies brought reading and writing, as literacies that you needed to access, right?

So computers bring quantitative literacy on the table just like reading and writing. So, Algebra now, while the planet is transitioning, while it`s transitioning, is available as an organizing tool. So, we`re using algebra as an organizing tool for educational and economic advancement, just like we use the vote for political advancement.

HARRIS-PERRY: Just as the freedom schools were connected to a sense of it, this is about math literacy. Part of why I wanted to connect this education as civil rights part of it, Judith, is because living as I do in New Orleans right now, before my move to North Carolina, I am watching what looks to me like a closure of certain kinds of basic civil rights around public education as the recovery school district in New Orleans goes to an all charter system.

I understand that you all actually have a suit about this.

BROWNE DIANIS: Sure, we filed a Title 6 complaint in New Orleans. But with local comment folks out front who have been fighting this fight, because they see the collapse of the public school system. And what that means for children of color in particular is they will be closed out of the opportunity to learn.

In fact, we`re just talking about, in Mississippi, what is being launched this summer by the Mississippi NAACP and One Voice is an actual ballot initiative to get a constitutional amendment for a right to education in the state of Mississippi. So I think we are seeing this kind of organizing that Mr. Moses is so well known for and Ella Baker. We`re seeing it across the country where communities have decided to take on the civil rights issues of this decade, of this generation, on their own.

HARRIS-PERRY: And yet there are still basic resource questions. So, I know as we were researching here you`re still working on getting just $5,000 in order to get the Algebra Project to Mississippi this summer. We talked with Walter Kimbrough who`s the head of HBCU in New Orleans earlier about funding.

Part of the movement is having the resources to do it. Where are the contemporary resources for building a sustainable movement?

MOSES: Yes, so for education, we need a national tax on education, right? And I think Roberts said it. He said in terms of the health care, Congress has the right to tax, right?

So we need -- I mean, the states don`t have any money. The cities don`t have any money. I mean, so we really need people to understand that`s what`s at stake in the 21st century, that the young people in this country have to be elevated to a constitutional status for purposes of the education. Otherwise, they are not going to make it.

We were looking at the serfs of the 20th century who were the sharecroppers in the Delta Mississippi. We`re growing serfs in our cities.

Any kid who lives high school with the equivalent of an eighth grade education is bound for serfdom in the 21st century.

HARRIS-PERRY: We are growing first in our cities because of our lack of a fundamental civil right to education.

Bob Moses, I am honored by you being at my table. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for your continued -- and for your decades of work.

Thank you, Judith, for spending time with us today. And that is our show for today. Thanks to all of you at home for watching. I will see you again tomorrow morning, 10:00 a.m. Eastern.

Tomorrow, we`re going to do something a little different. We`re going to talk about the politics of parenting, from policies impacting parents to pressures on new moms to lose the baby weight, to the billion dollar baby business. And, dads, we`re not going to forget about dads.

So, come on back tomorrow. It`s going to be different and a lot of fun. The politics of parenting.

Right now, it`s time for a preview of "WEEKENDS WITH ALEX WITT."

Hi, Alex.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.END

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